Letter to the editor: Reconsider what it means to vote for a third party candidate

Dear Editor,

In the Green Party View published on 10/18, Bill Carini writes, “The Green Party and the Jill Stein campaign are not funded by corporations, billionaires, and their shadowy super PACs; we are a grassroots movement.”

This statement deserves two responses: to funding and to, “grassroots.”

To quote from electoral-vote.com,, “Many readers will have seen this picture from a Vladimir Putin-hosted banquet celebrating the 10th anniversary of Russia Today.” According to the U.S.Government, RT is, “a fully fledged member of the intelligence apparatus and operation of the Russian government.” In the picture, Stein’s tablemates include Dmitri Peskov (Kremlin spokesperson), Sergey Ivanov (Putin’s Chief of Staff), Vladimir Putin, and, are you sitting, Michael Flynn, everyone’s favorite Trump loyalist.

electoral-vote.com continues: Exactly why she would rub elbows with, perhaps, the most dangerous and anti-American man in the world? Stein does not feel that people are entitled to that information. When reporters have tried to get some clarity, she huffily replies that it’s a shame that it takes a Russian TV outlet, “to actually be open to independent candidates in this country.”

There’s some truth to the grassroots claim, but background is in order. According to the New Republic, “She has been the leader of the Green Party for nearly a decade now, and the Party is a sinking ship. There are only 143 officeholders in the entire U.S. affiliated with the Party, and none of them occupy statewide or federal office. More damning, perhaps, is that when Stein first became involved with Party leadership (early 2000s), there were 319,000 registered Greens in the country. Now, despite the considerable population growth of the last two decades, that’s down to 234,000.”

No less an authority than the progressive Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez spoke about Stein: “If you have been your party’s nominee for 12 years in a row, 4 years ago and 4 years before that and 4 years before that, and you cannot grow your movement pretty much at all and can’t pursue any successful strategy, and all you do is show up once every 4 years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, but you’re just showing up once every 4 years to do that, you’re not serious. To me, it does not read as authentic, it reads as predatory.”

Please, before you vote for a third party candidate to teach someone a lesson, consider the consequence. Votes for Stein in 2016 gave us four years of a Trump presidency. Let’s not have that happen again.

Ted Crane, Ithaca